Full Sail Brewing Company

Look down. Candy-colored sails skim the Columbia like swarms of graffittied dragonflies. Look out. Snow-topped volcanic peaks descend into wildflower meadows, merge into evergreen forests, then abruptly stop at vertical basalt cliffs punctuated by pencil-thin waterfalls. Look up. Dry blue skies deliver the scent of ponderosas baking in the summer sun.

Sitting on the deck of the brewery here in Hood River on a brilliant August day never ceases to make us eternally grateful for every moment we get to spend in this amazing place. A little town full of blossoming fruit orchards and postcard-quality roadside stands, where every summer a landlocked surf town magically emerges from its winter ski-village cocoon.

Obviously, it's not hard to figure out what attracted us to this setting. Then again, if you'd stood in this very same spot back in 1987, on the day we first laid eyes on our future brewery, you might not have noticed the sails or the waterfalls or the cute little town that was suddenly attracting windsurfers from all over the world. No, standing in what was then old Diamond Fruit cannery, you would have been preoccupied with other thoughts. Like wondering how time had somehow stopped, Twilight Zone style, circa 1972.